As A Woman Who Worked In Tech For 15 Years, I Can Confidently Say Mark Zuckerberg Is Wrong About Corporate Culture Needing More “Masculine Energy”
Note: This post is an Op-Ed and shares the author’s personal views.
This week on the Joe Rogan Experience, a gold chain-adorned Mark Zuckerberg said he felt the corporate world had become “culturally neutered” and that corporate culture had strayed too far from “masculine energy.” As a woman who spent 15 years working in the tech industry, I absolutely disagree.
Throughout those 15 years, I worked as an IT technician, IT Site Lead, Systems Administrator, and Systems Engineer at some of the largest companies in Silicon Valley. I’m not mentioning them specifically, but the chances that you’ve interacted with one of the companies’ software or hardware is nearly 100%.
@joerogan / Via youtube.com
During my career, as I walked past ping-pong tables and kegerators, shrugged off inappropriate jokes, got asked to take notes in meetings, and had my ideas dismissed, I never once felt a lack of masculine energy.
In fact, I was absolutely smothered by it. That’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy a surprise Nerf gun battle from time to time, but my infrastructure and engineering teams were 90% men. In my entire career, I never worked on a team with more than three women, and never had more than four women in my department, which at one time was made up of around 40 people.
Tech has always been a boys’ club.
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Though the presence of women has increased, they remain a minority in the tech industry. The Society of Women Engineers reports that in 2022, “only 18% of software developers and 25% of computer and information research scientists in the computer industry were women.”
And when women do spend any length of time working in the field, they leave engineering careers at a much higher rate than men. “Gender stereotyping in the workplace, coupled with unchallenging projects, blatant sexual harassment, and greater isolation from supportive networks, leads many female [engineering] students to revisit their ambitions,” according to the Harvard Business Review.
At one of my jobs, a year-end employee survey showed a huge discrepancy in job satisfaction between men and women in engineering. It was so high that a special women-only meeting was called to address the poor sentiment (by the only woman in a position of leadership, I might add). On average, all of the women had rated their work experience more poorly: They were more frustrated, less happy, and felt more undervalued.
One of the women I worked with closely, who I found to be friendly, approachable, an incredibly skilled engineer, and a crucial source of institutional memory, revealed that she’d attempted to communicate these feelings to her manager. Instead of addressing her detailed and specific concerns, he’d replied with nothing more than saying, “You are valued here,” which she felt was condescending and impersonal.
I was surprised — not that he’d said it, but that it was happening to her, too.
During the discussion, we agreed that we felt we were often overlooked for praise during successful launches and rollouts as male teammates were featured instead. We were also relied upon more heavily as escalation points for other teams because we were supposedly “better at communicating.”
That meant that we were well-known for being kind to — and constantly available for — anyone who needed our help. Above and beyond our actual work assignments, we constantly responded to messages from coworkers working through difficult technical issues or looking for advice. Our male teammates didn’t have to take on the same responsibilities because they were often outright rude or dismissive to those asking for assistance, deterring people from reaching out again.
I often heard things like, “You’re the only one that actually helps me,” or “You’re the only person on your team that’s nice,” or “What would I do if you weren’t here?” Imagine choosing a culture that celebrates aggression. It would be a message to any employee to consider moving to a new company where they’d be treated with respect and kindness.
On a separate occasion, a male colleague yelled at me, inches from my face, over something minor — damage to some drywall that had occurred while my team was moving a pallet of heavy equipment. I was incredibly shaken up by the incident and immediately reached out to my manager for help. His inclination, having not been present for the altercation, was that I, his only female subordinate, was likely overreacting. But, he said, I could reach out to HR if I was concerned.
At the suggestion of a male teammate who had been present and saw how inappropriate the interaction was, I decided to do so.
When I approached our HR rep, I was shocked when she said she’d been expecting me. I learned I was the only female team lead who had not yet lodged a formal complaint against that employee.
They asked him to apologize, and his apology consisted of an “I’m sorry you felt that way” statement. When I relayed this to HR, she said to expect that it was as good as it would get.
Eventually, I left that company. He remains employed there.
Zuckerberg said that celebrating aggression “has its own merits that are positive.” I’d love to understand what, exactly, is positive about aggression in the workplace. I guess it makes sense to someone who sees the ideal corporate culture as a monolith where men feel comfortable to say and do whatever they please. But research has shown that companies benefit from diverse workforces.
According to Forbes, companies that embrace diversity are more innovative, creative, and make better decisions. And for any billionaire CEOs who might be more focused on the bottom line, LinkedIn reports that “organizations in the top quartile for gender diversity have a +25% likelihood of financially outperforming their peers.”
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Working in the tech industry as a woman means dealing with a constant onslaught of aggression. I’ve attended company parties where female employees were groped by higher-ups, watched men leave caustic voicemails on female colleagues’ work phones, and seen talented and capable women passed over for promotions.
I’ve sent messages back and forth with other women while misogynistic remarks were made in all-hands meetings and spent weeks creating Visio flowcharts and documentation to prove a point that readily would have been accepted if it had come from one of my male counterparts.
How does one move any further toward “aggression” and “masculine energy” without making it clear that the workplace is not designed for women or marginalized genders at all?
Zuckerberg himself has taken his own sharp turn toward what seems to be a more “masculine energy” — from a once awkward, robotic nerd wakeboarding in too much sunscreen to a full-fledged billionaire building a compound in Hawaii and getting pumped up at UFC fights.
And he’s seemingly begun to incorporate that energy and aggression into Meta’s corporate culture by changing their policies on hate speech, ending diversity programs, and announcing upcoming layoffs.
I’m not entirely sure what the future holds for the tech industry as a blatantly less tolerant leadership comes into focus. But one thing I can say is: If you want to have a more skilled workforce, happier employees, and better productivity, keep the aggression out of the workplace.
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